Many presentations at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) focused on new research involving immunotherapy, including drugs for melanoma and lung cancer that have shown great success in prolonging life in patients with advanced disease. The number of immunotherapy drugs in development is growing, using different antibody mechanisms to identify and destroy cancer cells.
In an interview with Bloomberg News before the ASCO meeting, several oncologists and drug manufacturers expressed their excitement about these new developments. If the new generation of drugs using the body’s immune system to identify cancer cells lives up to its promise, “this is going to be a paradigm shift for treating cancer,” said D. Gary Gilliland, MD, PhD, Senior Vice President at Merck. “We are pretty good at shrinking tumors, but not good at getting rid of them. Immune therapy is a way to begin to approach that.”
Jedd D. Wolchok, MD, PhD, Director of Immunotherapy at the Ludwig Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, said, “A couple of years ago, the big story was that immunotherapy can work. Now immunotherapy has entered the mainstream.”
Oncologists “are accustomed to moving from one therapy to another as tumors rapidly develop resistance,” said Michael S. Gordon, MD, President and CEO of Pinnacle Oncology Hematology, Scottsdale, AZ. “It is generating tremendous excitement to have a drug class that might well be able to provide long-term control of metastatic cancer.” Bloomberg News; May 13, 2013
